1218. Robert Southey to James Webbe Tobin, 22 September 1806

If it were necessary to offer you an excuse for not furnishing you with an Epilogue, [1] I could find a very valid one in the quantity of business
which presses upon me, – which, if you knew all, you would think sufficient for any two men, how indefatigable soever. In spite of this
I would do what you desire me if it were in my power; – but I could no more write an epilogue than I could dance a minuet, or caper
upon the slack wire. It is utterly out of my power, – nor can the strong wish I feel to do any thing which so slight a
service for you, remove the feeling of inability.

I am sorry that Coleridge designs to Lecture [2] – because it will detain him from his other work which is of more immediate importance, & because I fear he will
be delay getting ready in time, always be behind hand, always hurried, & become thoroughly disgusted with
what he has undertaken, & fret himself into his old state of debility. That this will be the consequence I am so certain, that, if
it be not too late, I shall use my best endeavours to dissuade him from the scheme.

The poem which you sent me is curious. Baetas friend has learnt something from him. The words azote & gas appear
(for the first time I suppose) in Portugeuze verse, & the Ode concludes with a prayer to be delivered from Ignorance who is the
mother of all evil. I am glad Baeta [3] is desirous of keeping up his English
acquaintance, & shall send him over some of my own books in exchange.

Success to your comedy play. [4] Your brother is a
real loss to the stage – he would have restored the genuine language of xxx comedy.

[1] Tobin had asked Southey to write an epilogue, probably to The Curfew: a Play (1807), the
posthumously-published work of Tobin’s brother John Tobin (1770–1804; DNB), a London solicitor and playwright whose
comedy The Honey Moon had been a success in 1805. BACK

[2] According to a letter to Charles Danvers,
Coleridge was to lecture ‘at the Royal Institution upon the Principles common to the Fine Arts’; see Southey to Charles Danvers, 18
October 1806, Letter 1229. He did not in fact lecture there until 1808, on the subjects of the Principles of Poetry, Shakespeare and
Milton. BACK

[3] Francisco Xavier Baeta was a Portugueze physician with whom
Southey had become acquainted; see Southey to John May, 7 July 1807, Letter 1342. BACK